World briefs

Eight million Americans admit they send themselves Valentine's Day gifts - they may feel lonely and unloved but at least they will get something nice.

British lovers ought to steer clear of Paris as a Valentine destination - one in three picked the French capital as the city most likely to cause them to argue on a romantic break.

It's the time of year again when love is in the air - or at least the pressure is on to show you really, really care on February 14.

Surveys abound on what makes the perfect gift - usually commissioned by a company trying to sell its Valentine wares - but the way the big day for lovers is celebrated around the world could not be more different.

It all used to be so simple - buy your lover chocolates, roses or, if you are feeling very generous, diamonds.

But today we wonder. What if the diamonds financed wars in Africa, the cocoa beans were harvested by children in Ivory Coast and the roses grown in a pesticide mist in Latin America?

Drugs in underpants

Police in Sierra Leone have arrested a Briton who tried to board a flight to Europe with a kilogram of cocaine hidden down his trousers, a senior officer said on Tuesday.

The man was searched at Lungi international airport near the capital Freetown as he tried to leave the West African country.

"Seven packets of cocaine were found wrapped in a sock which he had placed before his private area," Chief Superintendent Carow Kamara, head of airport police, said.

"The sock was opened and the packets totalling one kilogram were discovered," he added.

West Africa has become an important staging post for Colombian cocaine on its way to lucrative European markets.

Gorillas do it face-to-face

Leah, the first gorilla ever seen using tools, has secured herself another small place in history by becoming the first gorilla captured on film mating face-to-face.

A team from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, photographed the unusual scene in the Republic of Congo. Although other researchers have reported seeing gorillas in such a human-like position, none had ever been photographed.

"It is fascinating to see similarities between gorilla and human sexual behaviour demonstrated by our observation," said Max-Planck's Thomas Breuer, who photographed the gorilla coupling.

"Understanding the behaviour of our cousins the great apes sheds light on the evolution of behavioural traits in our own species and our ancestors," Mr Breuer added.

Mr Breuer said only a few primates such as bonobos mate in a face-to-face position, known technically as ventro-ventral copulation. Most usually mate while facing in the same direction.

Most primitive bat ever found

The most primitive bat ever found fluttered around about 52 million years ago, but lacked a key feature seen in most bats - the ability to echolocate, hunting and navigating using a kind of sonar.

Scientists announced the discovery yesterday of a medium-sized ancient bat called Onychonycteris finneyi that possessed fully-developed wings and was completely capable of flying. But they said that based on the evidence from its skeleton it lacked the ability to echolocate.

One of the scientists said this bat appears to settle a long-standing debate of which came first in bats - echolocation or flight. The answer is flight.

"It's as if this is sort of half way to being a modern bat. It's the most primitive bat that we know. It could clearly fly. But it could not echolocate. The evidence from the skull and throat region shows us none of the features that echolocating bats have," the scientist said.

Chronicles of a death

An unemployed German man, tired of life, chronicled his death by starvation in a diary after withdrawing to a hunter's hide in the countryside near Hanover.

The 58-year-old's decaying corpse was found on Friday by two hunters in the hide, five metres above the ground, almost a month after the last entry on December 13, a police spokesman said.

According to the diary, the man had suffered a broken marriage, was estranged from his daughter and had had his unemployment benefit stopped.

The diary, which detailed 24 days the man spent without eating, will be passed on to his daughter.